Thursday, May 21, 2009

These days I often use the routing and "Get Directions" of Google Maps on my Window Mobile. And Yes, It works in India too to a great extent. One feature that always surprises me is "My Location" - Auto-detecting my geographic location. Simply because my mobile does no have a GPS receiver.

So how does Google find out my location to a precision of 500 metres (sometimes 5KM when I go for a drive outside the city)? When I used to talk to people about this the unanimous answer was "Google finds it from your mobile signal". I too was under the assumption that Google Maps, through your handset asks your mobile phone operator the geographical co-ordinates of the tower from where it's catching the signal. Simple huh? But not.

On reading I found out that the Mobile operator does not say anything about the location coordinates of your cell tower or your device. Google does a trick here. Each mobile coverage cellular area (remember the Hexagon shaped cell) has a number attached to it (Some kind of serial number to uniquely identify that hexagon shaped cell). Google then uses a database that maps this cell number to geographical coordinates.

But how does Google get the coordinates that fall under that cell?

To do that, Google uses other GPS-enabled devices that are active in your cell area. It collects data like geographical location and service cell ID from these anonymous devices. At the end what Google has is an expanding database of service cell ID (Vs) set of coordinates that fall under that cell. So that's how the "My Location" in a Non-GPS enabled device is a bigger circle and Google says its your location approximated to some specific metres. It also explains why Google does not show it at all at some remote places when I travel on the highway outside the city. Looks like nobody has gone there and activated their GPS reciever and "helped" Google :-D

5 comments:

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